I first encountered Peirce’s Collected Papers sometime during my freshman year in one of the quieter corners of the Michigan State Math Library where I used to hide out to study and shortly after a friend showed me the description of Spencer Brown’s Laws of Form in the 1st Whole Earth Catalog and I sent off for it right away. I would spend the next ten years trying to figure out what either one of them was talking about.

In my view, Spencer Brown penetrated to the deepest strata of Peirce’s core ideas about logic, recognizing its operational aspect and relational power in a way we’ve seldom seen since. Not too coincidentally, those aspects and powers were a big part of what I wrote my Senior Thesis on at the end of my undergrad years.